Powell sentenced for 35-year-old murder of Seaside mother of three

Sandra Steppuhn disappeared in 1982, listed as missing for 32 years

Salinas >> A state prison inmate and former Monterey resident was sentenced to 15 years to life on Friday for the 32-year-old murder of a Seaside mother of three.

Alfred Powell, 62, was sentenced by Monterey County Superior Court judge Julie Culver for second degree murder in the slaying of Sandra Steppuhn, who was killed on Dec. 9, 1982.

Powell, currently an inmate at Solano state prison in Vacaville, pleaded guilty to Steppuhn’s murder on Jan. 5, just days before his jury trial was set to begin. He has been in custody since 1983 for the murder of Pebble Beach resident Suzanne Kay Nixon, who was slain in March 1983. The sentences will run consecutively.

During sentencing, Steppuhn’s former husband and three daughters, all pre-teens at the time of their mother’s death, told Powell he had permanently changed their lives but had not broken them, according to a District Attorney’s release.

In issuing her sentence, Culver called Powell “intensely egocentric” and said he had “psychopathic and sociopathic traits,” and that she had never seen anyone as “depraved” as him, according to the release. Culver told Powell she intended for him to spend the rest of his life in prison, the release said.

Steppuhn disappeared the night she was killed after giving a ride to a hitchhiker later identified as Powell, and she was reported missing two days later. The car she was driving the night she disappeared was found abandoned in February 1983 but investigators found no evidence indicating her fate, and she remained listed a missing person for 32 years.

Retired Salinas police detective Mark Clark re-opened the Steppuhn investigation in 2009, and her skeletal remains were found in September 2015 buried in a makeshift grave in a yard on Third Street in Monterey where Powell had lived in a detached garage and where Nixon’s body was found.

Powell was formally charged with Steppuhn’s murder in June 2016 after Steppuhn’s former roommates identified her as the hitchhiker who had accompanied her the night of her disappearance.